


The Far Side of the Firestorm

by ruthlesslistener



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Derse/Prospit Royalty, Alternate Universe - Dragons, Blood and Violence, Dom/sub Undertones, Dragon Hal, Dragonrider AU, Dragons, Dysfunctional Family, Illustrations, M/M, Magical Bullshit, Political Alliances, Power Play, Prince Dirk Strider, Some mentions of dysphoria and objectification, Sorceress Roxy, Subspace, Trans Female Character, Trans Jake English, Trans Male Character, Trans Roxy Lalonde, the usual, you know
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-30
Updated: 2019-05-30
Packaged: 2020-03-29 16:43:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 14,284
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19023871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ruthlesslistener/pseuds/ruthlesslistener
Summary: Jake's a cartographer for Crockercorp, sent out to map the ruins of the fallen kingdom of Derse...and maybe find some adventure along the way. What he finds instead is the runaway prince of the fallen kingdom, and his asshole dragon, hidden away in the abandoned forgeworks nearby to pay penance for an accident cause by the very powers that the Empress wants to harness.AKA the au where Dirk and alpha Dave were dragonriders and rulers of Derse, and now Dirk and Roxy have to deal with Her Imperious Fish Bitch trying to capture them so that she can use their magic for nefarious purposes.





	1. First Encounter

**Author's Note:**

> "I don't need to be starting another fic, I say", as I start another fucking fic
> 
> EDIT: Shit, I forgot to warn for the gore scene. It starts at 'For all intents and purposes' and ends at '...Sitting around'. All it is is a dragon acting over-the-top territorial and scaring Jake, it's not essential to the plot at all

The rainforests on the fringe of the Isles of Fire were absolute _hell_ to get through.

Jake had been prepared to struggle- as he always was, really!- but this jungle wasn’t anything like the one that he had grown up on back on his grandma’s island, and the subtle differences between the two of them was starting to really throw him a loop. He was growing tired of tripping over gnarled roots, blunting his machetes on the tough, rubbery trees, finding himself trapped in narrow valleys where ancient lava flows had cracked as they cooled. The megafauna wasn’t too bad; the queen-ruled dragons of this territory were too big to fit between the trees, and their tendency to cannibalize their competitors meant that he didn’t often have to face down any fuckoff-huge, wickedly-smart, hungry lizards, like he had back in his jungle. But the tigers and the wild boars that prowled the darkened canopy were quite a deal more eager to hunt him down than he would have liked, and his old trick of throwing flammable seed-and-gum packets into his torch to create small explosions didn’t scare them as well as it should have. He had spent far too many nights already lashed to a tree, watching those massive predatory creatures stalking in the mists, thank you very much! He was an adventurer and a cartographer, not a suicidal maniac, and even though Jane often liked to complain that they were practically the same thing, Jake was not very interested in crossing the two. It was his job to brave the unknowns and come back unscathed, not to be eaten up by things that had never seen nor feared a man before. He had places to map, reports to give. He was a man on a mission, not a pansy-pants coward!

...Even said mission meant getting stalked by suspicious ash-grey deer twice the height of a normal man, their eyes burning with white fire in the light of the torches. Brr. He was never going to take a shit in the forest without at least one of his crossbows again. The memories of that particular encounter still plagued him at night, even when he had almost managed to convince himself that what he had seen wasn’t real. The mists that lurked in between the rubber trees made walking through the jungle feel like walking through a den of ghosts; it was entirely possible that what he had seen had just been a trick of the light.

Maybe.

The sharp cliff he had been using as an eastbound marker abruptly wound down to a mere hill in the undergrowth. Jake checked his compass, just to be sure of his whereabouts, then carefully followed the remaining rough sentiment to where the low rise of it took a sharp turn to the right, making the vegetation to grow at odd angles, before shooting back up again, forcing him to shove his way through the vines that draped in between the stone and wayward branches. The edge of a rough rock wall rose up out of the undergrowth, forming an almost cupped-shaped indentation in the topography, and he braced his hands on the first ledge he could find and pulled himself up, relishing in the burn in his muscles and the rough scrape of the rock under his palms. The ridge was another old pyroclastic flow from one of the many volcanoes that had birthed this land- he could tell by the rough nature of the stone- and when he finally clambered up and over it he finds that he’s managed to situate himself quite neatly at the foothills of the mountains it must have come from, well out of the bulk of the forest. It’s a refreshing view, after days trekking through deep, dense jungle, and Jake allows himself one content sigh and a few minutes of birdwatching before he remembers to take out a scrap of oiled parchment to start jotting down landmarks and other clues as to where he was. It’s fun-he really does love his job, despite his tendency to waffle over actually getting his work done- but it’s also a little irritating having to be so unspecific about certain things, like the names of the flora and fauna and the mountains he rests near. Settlements of humans, trolls, and carapacians alike never last long in these parts, and the dragons of the fiery mountains kept the names of their territories as fierce of a kept secret as the strange, brutal rites of their tribe. Jane wanted a clear map of entry to a major city from the westernmost shore of the biggest island (he thinks it’s called Sorthí-Khasthaūr? Maybe? Dragon-based names were such a mouthful, honestly), to the settlements in the center, so he’s angling for the ruins of the old kingdom-capital of Derse, and the townships that had sprang up around it. Crockercorp had had a trade agreement with them in the past, but they had only been allowed to dock their ships on the far side of the island, near the highblood-rich settlements of Alternia Terra, and _that_ particular arrangement had all gone sour when the troll Empress had torched the capital and attempted to seize any and all children of the nobles to use as blackmail material in her attempts to either murder or kidnap the royal family. Not quite the best person to be affiliated with, he supposed.

Jake didn’t really know. Politics involved a lot of sitting in a room, scowling, and talking to hostile people for hours, so it tended to go over his head sometimes, and he was more than fine with that. That was Janey’s role, not his, and part of the reason why they were such a good team. She handled the people for him, and he took the funds she gave him and went off to get himself fuck-deep in adventuring for weeks or months at a time. He didn’t need to know the political climate to know when it was time for an adventure! He and Jane always got along better after he came back, anyways, so it all worked out in the end. Right now, he’s a little more focused on figuring out how to cross the first volcanic arc to waste brainpower focusing on arguments happening half a world and three seas away. It’ll be a relief to get out of the rainforest; he’s been entrenched in that bitch for several days now. A bit of fresh, clear mountain air would do him a spot of good.

But...once he breaks free of the trees, he’ll be out in the open, and then the chances of dragon engagement go up dramatically. Jake doesn’t remember having nearly as much trepidation at the thought of encountering a wandering drake or errant drachling when he was still crashing about his islands off the shores of Paíga- but then again, he mused, the dragons that called themselves the kin of the Earth often decided that prey wasn’t worth it once he lodged a few dozen quills in their gullet. He’d only packed the lighter crossbows and bolts for this trip- three of which had been badly damaged after he’d taken a tumble a couple days into his venture- and if his grandma’s notes are anything to go by, the blasted creatures living here are more likely to try to kill him _after_ he politely told them to fuck off. Which was really not a fun thought to have. Like, at all.

Bleargh. Dragons. Sometimes, they’re even more alien than the trolls and carapacians, a horrifying mix between base animal instinct and ancient, intelligent beings; sometimes, they remind Jake all too well of the blokes he had to deal with in mapmaking classes who’d pick on him for his speech and clothing, before he decided to drop public school for good. Just over-all complicated assholes, the whole lot of them. Well, he supposed the windy ones weren’t too bad; Jane’s cousin John had gone off to bond one, and he was having a blast, but then again, the Queynï was the tribe that literally _invented_ dragonriding and the drachenbond, all by themselves, so he supposed it would be a bit weird if they didn’t learn how to get along nicely after 2,000+ years of living in harmony with humans and trolls. They weren’t at all similar the fire dragons, who had only started to allow civilizations larger than a few scattered villages on their lands a measly 206.5 years ago.

He shivers, then quells his nerves with a self-conscious laugh and a shake of his head. It wasn’t worth worrying about anything, really- if he was careful, and took the necessary precautions, then the chances of running into them were minimal. The queen-held dragons of this territory almost never ventured past the lava fields and the grasslands in the central heart of the islands anyways, and the stragglers and castouts that lived in the outskirts didn’t typically hunt scrawny little humans for food. It’s fine.

He’s fine.

But because his brain can be treacherous and play some rather mean tricks on him, he remembers that even though the dragons might be a huge threat, the bipedal inhabitants weren’t known to be much better; safe lodging was by no means a guarantee. The territory he’s trekking through held no human name because none of the human-based civilizations that tried to settle on it lasted very long- and for a good reason. The isles had been settled by pirates and criminals, desperate refugees who prefered to brave the hostile inhabitants and frequent volcanic eruptions than the laws of their homeland. Derse itself had been a militant kingdom before its fall, reaping its power and economic control from the strength of its warriors and its kinship with the monsters of their surroundings. When it fell, it had been not with a whisper, but a bang, its inhabitants still loyal to each other only through the shared indignation of being culled like animals. He had no idea if the remaining towns had any semblance of a unified governmental system left, or if they were even willing to let him try to barter for safe passage before disemboweling him and hanging his decapitated body on the mountainsides, as they were wont to do.

The only powerhouse still standing was the troll’s fleet in the province of Alternia Terra, safe under the terms that the empress had bought from the current Queen with her near-endless supply of gold. And Jake doesn’t want anything to do with that fleet; his grandma hadn’t taken too nicely to Her Imperious Condescension when she had fled from the ruins of her homeland, and Her Imperious Condescension didn’t take nicely to her, either. He still has nightmares about dragging her still-bleeding body to the pyre, of trying to clean up the blood off of her through a haze of his tears so that his grandma looked like his _grandma_ again, not like a corpse that had been skewered clean through by a culling fork. Not even the beasts of his family island had bothered him that night, even though it would have been far too easy for a weyr or nightwalker to have snatched him up for a quick midnight snack, and the memory of the possible dangers makes him shake with a fear that should have been left long in the past.

He...really doesn’t want to think about all the bad things welling up in his mind right now. He doesn’t want to drown tonight.

So he doesn’t, choosing to focus his thoughts on the task at hand rather than what might possibly lie ahead of him. Derse should be just to the northeast of him, right beyond the cusp of this very mountain range; it’s only technically been destroyed about eighteen years now, so he’s likely to stumble across the scattered settlements around it before long, even if he has no idea where they are or how to approach them. None of them are documented anywhere on the roughly-sketched maps of the Isles, littered with holes that Jake _fully_ intends on filling- innuendo notwithstanding. They deserved some sort of map, anyways; the last that the other lands had heard of them was when the last king of Derse had tamed a fire dragon and ridden it down to challenge the troll empress, right before his kingdom had been blown to bits. No one but a few select (but very determined!) trading groups had been in contact with the populace since them, and Jake’s funders weren’t going to bother trying without an accurate map to figure out where they were supposed to go. It was costly enough, Jane had told him, to fund one person venturing out alone, no matter how capable or willing he might be. Too much of a risk, to pay for the food and lodgings of an entire company. Too much of a risk, when the politics of the Isles were fragile enough, housing four very different, very powerful species constantly on the brink of war.

It had been a very awkward conversation. Even now, after tramping through a rainforest fraught with mist and spectors, Jake thinks that’s just a great big ol’ load of horseshit; even just one Dersite ambassador would have made his journey much less treacherous. But he’s just the outrider, the messenger, and it’s none of his business if the company backing him was too caught up in politics and money to care about something as wonderful as an adventure. That’s Jane’s problem, not his; she was the heir to it all, the smart one with the eye for politics and economics. His job was to go out and explore the wild, like his grandma had done before him, and maybe bring back some interesting trinkets and baubles to put up on a shelf. He finishes his sketches, pencils in his coordinates with a careful hand, and tucks away the parchment with a sigh, tipping his head back to enjoy the heat of the sun and the warm, humid tropical air. Jane would be anxious for him to keep moving, to stay on task; Jake couldn’t disagree more. There was no point to exploring if you couldn’t allow yourself to relax a little in between the big action sequences, after all!

He gives himself a brief moment of rest, refueling on a pear and a couple strips of peafowl jerky, then gets out his climbing gear and start to ascend the mountain foothills, scrambling expertly over the rocks and tangling vines littering it. These were all active volcanoes, once, and Jake soon found himself scanning the slopes eagerly for the curious rock formations and heat vents that he remembers finding on his old volcano back home. Sure enough, he spots a few huge caverns that were invisible from below yawning emptily on the sides of the bordering volcanoes, where intense heat and gaseous pressures would blow out holes before quickly becoming stoppered back up by either its own cave-ins, or the rising lava flow. He knows from his grandma’s teachings that the dragons and first settlers of the isles often flocked to those caverns to live in or scavenge for iron and diamonds- and sure enough, he spots a few telltale geometric shapes dotting the mouths of the caves, places where people and trolls and carapacians would set up homes alongside dragon-roosts to forge the raw metals and rocks into much more refined treasures to oggle over, making use of dragonfire and volcanic heat to shape their wares. It has him practically chomping at the bit to go explore the ruins; maybe, he thinks wistfully, if he manages to find an inn nearby then he’d be able to go exploring for artifacts under the pretense of figuring out the landscape. Adventure called- the mountains wouldn’t go anywhere, but artifacts weren’t forever. For all he knew, there could be old books and scrolls rotting away in there, their pages full of stories that had never seen the light of a public library. And wouldn’t that be a shame to miss out on! Jake loved stories about adventure almost as much as he loved adventure himself, but it had been quite a while since he had read anything new, and he was sure that Janey was getting sick of hearing him recite the same old things to her over and over again, no matter how polite she might be about it.

He was an efficient climber, so it wasn’t long before Jake had hiked around his volcano and found a crossing point. There was a little canyonlike valley between two of the mountains, the faint dirt trail in between the rock walls blocked off from above by a few fallen boulders. Most likely an old lava vent, turned into a wagon route; he wasn’t sure which, exactly, but it lead off in a relatively straightforward path to the woodlands past the mountain range, so it was proof enough of a crossing site and possible civilization for him.

Humming merrily under his breath, he began to hike down the slope of the old volcano to reach it, dropping carefully down to lower ledges when no handholds made themselves immediately apparent. He was pleased enough by the progress he had made that the missed opportunity to scout out the ruins was starting to fade into the back of his mind, tucked away to focus on later; he’d wasted a few hours climbing, and it was starting to dip down into the late afternoon already. He wanted to explore, but he didn’t want to find himself stuck in a crumbling old forge come nightfall. Too cold, too uncomfortable, and too much of a cave-in risk, if the odd, rhythmic booming noises echoing about the canyon walls were any indication. Jake had kept an ear on the sound for a while now- it had started halfway through his climb down- but he assumed that it couldn’t be anything other than a trick of the wind, or a minor rockfall caused by some subterranean volcanic activity, as was common in these parts.

Odd that it seemed to be getting louder, though. Maybe there was some seismic shifting going on as well? That might explain why the Isles of Fire were primarily made up of volcanoes; Jake’s grandma had been working on a theory linking earthquake-rich areas with volcanic activity based off of their temporal magical readings, but she hadn’t been able to finish the reacurch enchantment before she died, and Jake was too young and heartsick to look over her notes before he locked them all away in their underground vault. They might be worth looking over again, if he remembered to do so once he got back from this latest trip. Crockercorp enterprises might just wring him dry before he’d hit home, and then he’d _definitely_ be too tired to try to parse through his grandmother’s scratchy handwriting.

There was a brief silence punctuated only by the distant screeches of some variant of dragonkin, and then the next _boom_ echoed off of the canyon walls, startlingly close. A concussive blast of wind accompanied it, amplifying the already-wild mountain winds, sending dust and dead plant matter swirling around Jake. He hastily covered his mouth and nose in his shirt, blinking hard against the blinding storm, and let himself slide hastily down the slope, loose rocks and sand skittering out from under his feet in a shower of grit as he dropped down onto the rock above the winding passage. That wasn’t natural seismic _or_ volcanic activity. That sound spelled trouble, and if there was a storm coming-

He managed to regain his balance a second before the roar came.

He threw himself to the ground before he realized what was happening, dropping the last three meter to roll under the safety of the stone and crouch as low and close to the mountainside as possible. He’d managed to make it in a lick of time; right as he blinked the dust out of his eyes, a wyvern rocketed around the side of the mountain he had just been climbing, its high, wavering shrieks near-lost to the screaming of the wind. Even from here, meters below, Jake could see the way its claws and its mouth had been bloodied, the heaving of its chest as it dove through the canyon; the poor thing was terrified, panicking, and flying as if the devil itself was behind it.

For all intents and purposes, it wasn’t very far off.

The source of its panic came soaring around the corner half a heartbeat later, huge wings nearly parallel to the canyon walls as it used its momentum to slingshot around the curve of the mountain wall. A dragon- a _true_ dragon, a fire dragon, one of the queenborn- and an angry one at that, its lips pulling back in an angry snarl before it opened its huge yellow-tinged maw and roared again. The sound was deafening- thunder and fire and the scream of dying horses, magnified a thousand times over by the echo of the canyon walls and the massive bellows of the dragon’s lungs- and Jake whimpered before he could stop himself, slapping his hands over his ears to try to muffle the awful sound echoing all around him. The wyvern shrieked in response, a high, warbling cry, and made as if to dive, its small, arrow-shaped head pointing towards the ground- but it never managed to make the maneuver. Almost as if it had predicted the move, as if it had been trying to goad the creature into it, the dragon curved its head down and lunged forward, teeth snapping shut on the wyvern’s tail before it could fully tuck its wings into its body. The dragonkin _screamed,_ a sound of panic and pain, and writhed in its grasp- but the flamedrake did not relent, shaking its head like a dog with a rat, until, with a terrible tearing noise and a gush of blood, the last half of the wyvern’s tail ripped clean off.

Jake’s heart leapt into his throat, and shifted one hand to his mouth, trying valiantly not to throw up.

The wyvern keened, crying its shock to the heavens, and lurched back into flight, flapping doubletime to compensate for the loss of the last five or so meters of its tail. Bright, hot blood splattered onto the trail as it passed through the valley; Jake,disgusted and more than a little terrified, scrambled to avoid being splashed, and watched as the injured creature dove into the forest on the other side of the mountain, banking left from where he wished to go, before turning back to the bigger threat at hand, his heart pounding doubletime in his chest. The threat in question did not pursue; it soared to a stop, and backwinged hard against the rush of the wind, the iridescent red of its underwing flaring fire-bright in the afternoon sun. Jake winced, and cowered back when it flared its crest, raised its head, and and roared again- a triumphant, bugling cry made all the more terrifying by the gore streaked over its face and the still-twitching tail in its mouth, blood splattering over its chest with every dying spasm. Its territorial display done, the dragon tilted its head and let the tail fall, an almost derisive curl to its lip as it watched it drop to the canyon floor, and then wheeled about and soared back the way it came, the rush of wind from its passage carrying the stink of sulfur and blood down to where Jake huddled, wide-eyed and terrified.

That was...more than just a territory display. That was a threat, an act of cruelty that Jake had heard about, but had never seen before in person. Wyverns were clever creatures, yes, but they had about the same level of intelligence as your average barnyard cat; they were clever enough to steal your food, and to gloat about it when you got angry at them for it, but they weren’t _cruel_. It would have been more than enough to just scare the poor creature away from the kill that it had probably stolen; there was no need to chase it willy-nilly around the mountains and to dismember it like that. The poor thing was going to be crippled for the rest of its life- if it even survived the shock, and the resulting infection from being mauled by dragon fangs- it would struggle greatly in flight, its primary rudder system lost, counterbalance shot. Jake doubted that it would ever be able to reach such high speeds again, if it was even able to learn how to compensate for the injury in the first place.

But that, he thought grimly, as he eyed the bloodied tail draped limply across the road, was probably the point.

...Sitting here in shock wasn’t going to do him any good. There was danger about; a dragon lurked in the mountains, one that clearly didn’t take very kindly to visitors, and Jake had no idea whether or not it would be willing to be bargained with. His grandmother had always warned him against rushing headlong into situations without knowing what to expect, and while he is familiar enough with the drakes and dragonesses of the tribes of Paíga, he is _very_ unfamiliar with the dragons of Sorthí-Khasthaūr, let alone the regional dialect and unique body language that he’d probably have to parse through if he tried to communicate. If he was even able to get the thing to talk to him instead of just torching him, he’d probably just muck it right up anyways.

He is. Kind of very much not keen on trying his luck right now. No siree.

He gulps in a breath of air, tries not to choke on the spreading scent of rot and the sweet iron of dragon’s blood, and takes off to the trees on the far side of the valley, eager to be lost in their familiar foliage once again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For reference, that wyvern's body was roughly the size of a pickup truck. Just in case anyone wanted to understand how large a 'regular' animal is in this world. 
> 
> Shit's gotta be big to support a dragon-based ecosystem, what can I say.


	2. A Rogue Sorceress

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I probably should have waited a little bit to post this, but in my defense, I'm really eager to get to Dirk and that eagerness makes me impatient for feedback. Also, because I'm shit at explaining tattoos beyond 'them swirly', you get my concept art in this chapter, too. Yippe
> 
> Explanation of how magic works can be found in the end notes, if any of this shit is confusing to you

It wasn’t long along before he found another visitor on the trail through the woodlands. 

Of course, because Jake’s luck couldn’t get any better, the fellow he ran into was one of the carapacians of Derse, a black-hued variant with a shell bearing heavy scarring. Suspicious folk, the lot of them were, wary of outsiders and prone to fighting; his grandma had rather enjoyed parleying with Dersite envoys, given the fact that they boasted a massive number of mixed races and cultures from their pasts as runaways, but Jake himself had never actually had to directly interact with one of the carapacians, and was a little rusty with remembering their culture.

He just wished that getting introduced via a stab to the arm wasn’t the primary reminder method.

**_'What, never took an introductory stab before, kid?’_ ** The shell that shanked him let out a throaty click of disapproval at his squeal of outrage, wiping his bloodied knife on the side of his shirt with the nonchalance of a person who had done it many times beforehand. The right head of the two twin luscii pulling his caravan snorted, leaning forward to try to lick the knife; he smacked it with the flat of the blade, side-eyeing it irritably as it squealed and tried to bite him in return.  **_‘Gimme a fucking break.’_ **

“We don’t usually draw a knife on a person when we first meet them, no!” Jake spluttered, and did his best to tie a shredded piece of his shirt over the wound; it wasn’t particularly deep, but it  _ hurt,  _ and he wasn’t in a good enough mood to try to sign back at the carapacian, the way that a civil person was expected to. Fuck, he’d  _ liked _ this shirt. “I say, warn a fellow before turning a blade on him!”

The carapacian had the audacity to  _ roll his eyes at him. _ Jake was just trying to be helpful- his caravan had gotten stuck in a rut, and the weird conjoined antelope-cow luscii attached to it had been right smack dab in the middle of pitching a rebellion when Jake had swung by. He was going to help the poor fellow out, give him a hand in exchange for some information on where he could find a repairsmith, but then he had stabbed him, and, well- now they were in this situation.  **_‘And where the fuck do you think we are, fuckin’ Prospit? Shit’s dangerous here, human, the Empress’s spies are everywhere, lookin’ for Dersites like me to capture and interrogate. I ain’t just gonna let any random fucker approach me on the street without checkin’ them first, and if you think I’m not the only one, foreigner, then you’re fuckin’ delusional.’_ **

He...had a point. Jake swallowed down his ire, hard as it was, and glowered at him, signing clumsily along with his words. Carapacian speech was something his grandma had taught to him when he was very little, but he had stopped practicing after she died, and the white-shelled carapacians that Jane usually conferred with were generally quite fluent in understanding human speech without the aid of signs. “I was going to help you out! I’m a cartographer of Crockercorp, but I need to find an inn to rest in and a smith to repair my gear before I can go about making maps of this area. I was hoping that if I helped you out with your wagon, then you’d tell me where to find those things! I’m not as new to this as you think, mister!”

**_'An equivalent exchange, eh? Not something that’ll get me all indebted to you ‘n shit? I can get behind that. Already stabbed you, so that’ll be worth at least one point of advice.’_ ** The carapacian let out a creaking, chirring grunt, thinking it over, then nodded once, tucking his knife away. Jake let out a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding.  **_‘Alright. I’m in a hurry to get outta here, anyways, and you’re built like a brick shithouse. Lift my wagon outta this shitty road, and I’ll tell you where to go, ‘long as you promise you ain’t one of the Empress’s.’_ ** He scurried over to the luscii’s halter, preparing to yank them forward, then stopped and snuck a suspicious glance at Jake on the last note, scanning him closely.  **_‘You don’t look it, but those bastards have been killing off Dersites since that fool of a dead king decided to introduce her to dragonfire some time ago. If you even have the slightest affiliation with her, you ain’t getting any advice outta me, you hear? I hate it when a snarky broad in power decides to go all genocidal and shit.’_ **

“Heavens to betsy, no!” Jake wasn’t quite able to keep the venom out of his voice this time, and he winced and hurried over to the other end of the caravan before the carapacian decided to get stabby again. “That old fish bitch killed my grandmother! There’s no way in shitting hell I’d ally with her, I assure you!”

**_‘Ah, a blood-tied rivalry. I can respect that.’_ ** The carapacian nodded, easing up a little, then glared at him and stuck his rough grey tongue out at Jake. His teeth were unnervingly sharp, conical and arrayed like a shark’s.  **_‘Now get to work before I decide not to be so nice anymore.’_ **

“Alright, alright! By the star-strung tail of the Wayfarer, stop getting your knickers in a knot.” Jake grumbled, and braced his good arm against the back of the wagon with a grunt. It wasn’t too heavy, thankfully- he was pretty blasted strong, and the carapacian didn’t seem to be carrying too many wares- but the luscii at the head of the carriage lowed and grunted and shoved back against their burden, so it took a few more tries of tugging, swearing, and pushing before the wheel spun out of the rut in the road. Jake’s other shoulder was aching quite vigorously at that point, protesting an afternoon of hiking, running from dragons, and pushing wagons- the possibility of an inn was getting to be a cushier prospect the longer he let his mind linger on it.     **** ****

The carapacian wasted no time scrambling back up into the driver’s seat, slipping the reins back into his claws. Jake straightened himself, alarmed at the prospect of the carapacian fleeing before giving him so much as a nugget of information- but the black-shelled fellow merely hiss-chirred a few rather inventive swear words at the luscii before waving you over, giving the road behind him a furtive glance. Eager to hear what he had to say, but wary of being stabbed again, Jake shuffled a few feet closer, adjusting his pack to sit more comfortably against his shoulders.

The carapacian clicked his throat at him disapprovingly, but didn’t try to push the issue. **_“There’s a town another hour or two down the road from here. If you hurry, you’ll be able to reach it before nightfall. Follow this road for a bit longer until it diverges, then take the first turn to the left, into the thick of the woods. You may feel a little uncomfortable going through the trees, but that’s normal. Don’t pussy out. If your intentions really are kind, you’ll find the village in no time, The innkeeper is a sour old bitch, but they survived the fall of Derse, so don’t go around saying shit without being careful, or you get no bed to sleep on tonight.”_** He paused, flexing his claws to get the soreness of signing out, then gave Jake a stern frown. Jake jolted, not entirely sure what he did wrong, and saluted on reflux, the same way that Jane’s father had always tried to make him do when there were orders being given. The carapacian snorted a little at this, but didn’t comment. **_“As for your gear- which is over complicated as fuck, I see- you’re gonna wanna look for a Rogue. There’s a chick that frequents here who goes by that title. She’s a traveling sorceress who sells talismans n shit, has an accord with a craftsman that lives up in the mountains somewhere or whatever. Her familiar name is Roxy, but don’t call her that if you don’t wanna get hexed or laid, she don’t want her name getting out to the masses. Not that I care. ‘Course, you can just seek out the craftsman himself-he loves complex shit like your over glorified knife-flinger- but he’s a quiet sort, and no one knows where he lives, exactly. There are a lotta of abandoned forges, there are a lotta mountains, and there’s a juvenile rogue dragon-_** _”_ This gesture comes out weird, as if the carapacian was trying to merge a lot of indignant descriptors with the word for ‘teenager- **_“settin’ up territory in the ‘ranges, so exploring is out of the question. Hasn’t eaten someone yet, but he likes to circle around and generally be a gods-blasted menace, so finding the rogue smith on yer own terms is gonna be hell. His middleman- er, middlewoman- might not be in town, though.”_**

The carapacian stopped with a grunt, and scratched the softer chitin near his strange white eyes thoughtfully, close to where a ragged knife scar left a seam in the protective shell.  **_“Maybe it would be faster if you looked for that smith regardless...ah, well. Point is, those are the only two craftspeople we got around here who are even somewhat capable of handling your bullshit without breaking it, and neither of them run a tight schedule. So buckle up, buttercup. You gotta long wait ahead of you.”_ **

“Er...thanks? I guess?” Jake squinted at him, torn between being indignant at the phrasing and being thankful he got any kind of information at all. “Um, where exactly am I supposed to look for this Ranger again…?”

The carapacian snapped a whip at the luscii and bared his teeth at him, displeased at being delayed. The conjoined monsters growled and tossed their heads, nearly goring themselves in the eyes, but started off at such a sedate, plodding gait that all Jake had to do was turn his head to be able to read the Dersite’s signing.  **_“Fuck if I know, kid, I never wanted nothing to do with magic. Try the bars or some shit, she’s got a lot of old drinking buddies who’ll be able to tell you more than I can. Just don’t try to buy her a drink. She’s trying to go clean, and any reminder of what she’s missing ends with you getting a whole lotta pumpkin where you never thought a pumpkin should go. Now shut the fuck up and leave me alone!”_ **

The whip cracked, the luscii lowed angrily, and the caravan picked up speed, racing off down the dirt road. Jake stared after them for a couple of minutes, mouth agape, and turned and started to hurry down back down the path, shaking off the weird encounter as something that he hadn’t personally fucked up. Dersites tended to be irritable and suspicious, he knew, but there was something disquieted and worrisome writhing in his belly, filling his head with all the little blunders that he might have made to deserve such a treatment.

He really, really hoped that he could find this Rogue craftswoman soon.

He was so lost in his head that he didn’t hear the sound of panting until it was nearly upon him. Startled, he looked up, and then froze as two dark shapes hurled out of the trees.

Two lean, speckled hunting-hounds raced up to him, tongues lolling out of their mouths. One shot right past him, circling around to where he had helped the carapacian in a restless figure eight; the other leapt at him, baying loudly, and he stumbled back, instinctively bracing himself as he received a very, very excitable armful of dog, the bitch’s tail windmilling furiously as she licked his face.

“Calliope! Caliborn! Heel!” The thunder of hooves came crashing out of the undergrowth; a very pretty blonde garbed in dark blue sat astride a stallion far too big for her, emerging from a pathway that Jake could have sworn hadn’t been there just a second ago. The hunting hound bracing herself on Jake’s chest dropped down to circle back to her, weaving around the horse’s feet with the familiarity- or boldness- of an animal who knew that she would not get trampled. The other hound merely bayed, long and angry, and threw itself to the ground in a dramatic flurry of limbs, acting for all the world like his owner had just betrayed him.

The rider sighed, and dismounted, reaching down to scratch fondly at her dog’s ear. From this angle, Jake could see that she was not only taller than him- an impressive feat, but they tended to run tall here, he supposed- but also had the glyph of a Dersite Void sorcerer stitched on her chest, black against dark blue. His heart beat faster at that; surely it would be too easy for him to have just run into the person he had been looking for, right? But the world worked in mysterious ways, he supposed, and he had already spent the day tramping through a hostile rainforest, scampering around the asscrack of an ancient volcano range, getting the shit scared out of him by an apex predator, and receiving a knife to the arm. He supposed a bit of good luck was in order, even if some part locked away deep within him shrank back at the thought of engaging in more conversation, when he was already worn out and tired from dealing with the stabby carapacian.

“Hey there, traveler! Sorry ‘bout that, my puppies are a bit new to all this. Hope you didn’t get slobbered on too much, I’m trying to get Callie to be a lil more wary of strangers but it ain’t workin’. She’s just too much of a sweetheart.” The sorceress knelt, ruffling the dog’s ears fondly; Callie’s entire back end started to wriggle as she licked her master’s face, gluing her pale blonde hair to her cheek. The woman laughed, delighted, and shoved her down with an affectionate grin. “See? Just a regular ‘ol pile of love. Her brother’s more of a bitch than she is, t-b-h, I have no idea what the fuck is up with his grumpy ass.”

Jake glanced back to where he came from, watching as the other hound continued to tantrum, and tried to unstick his tongue from where it had mysteriously glued itself to the roof of his mouth. He wouldn’t get his repairs done if he didn’t find Roxy- and he wouldn’t know if this woman was Roxy unless he asked. It would do him no good to get cold feet now- and besides, she seemed nice, she’d hardly gut him over a simple question anyways. Even if she was really quite devastatingly pretty, with her mysterious hood and cape and mask and magic. Jake prided himself on being a gentleman, but pretty women never failed to make him tongue-tied.

“Oh, erm, it’s no problem! I’m searching for a town around here, hopefully so I could find a hot meal and make some repairs on my gear?” He winced, face burning with embarrassment at his stutter, and held up his automatic crossbow for an example, flashing a radiant smile as if it could help fill in the gaps in his speech. Stupid, stupid- this hesitation would do no good in a kingdom so suspicious of outsiders! He had to be assertive! Like those uncomfortably buff men on the covers of the novels that Jane enjoyed, but never wanted him to read. “It’s custom-made, so it’s a bit complicated, a real tickle for the creative pickle. I’ve been told that there are a couple of Rogues about who could help me out with it…? If it isn’t too much of a trouble, I was hoping that a friendly lady like you could give me a pointer.”

He braced himself to ramble on for a little while longer, butter her up for some information. He didn’t need to. The woman’s eyes brightened as soon as she saw the crossbow, her sharp attention diverting from him, and she was on her feet and by his side before he knew it, her stallion snorting irritably as he was forced to follow. “Oh my GODS that thing is so cool! Mind if I have a look at it?” She made eager grabby hands at him, bright pink eyes wide and eager; bemused, Jake dropped it into her hands, watching with a mingled sense of pride and worry as she hefted it expertly in her arms, peering down the shot line. “Holy fuckin shit, this thing is cool- I love crossbows, this is totally my jam. Had a lot of them when I was a lil younger, but I had to abandon them when the Empress’s men decided to get right up in my grill.  Made by good ol’ Miss English, ain’t it? This automatic reloading thingamajig looks like one of her works.”

Jake chirped an affirmative, heart warming with pride at the recognition of his grandmother’s work, and the sorceress grinned back, turning the crossbow over to peer at the mechanisms operating it. “Aw fuck yeah, that lady was a genius- my late uncle was a big fan of her work. Had a whole collab with her and everything. What’s gone wrong with it? If it’s a mechanical jam thing, I can probably help you with it.” She tilted it back upright, then stiffened, and continued on talking before Jake could reply, giving him a sheepish grin. “Oh! ‘Scuse my rude ass, got distracted by these sick machines. I’m one of the Rogues you said you were looking for- name’s Roxy, but don’t let it slip in impolite company, the fish bitch herself is after my ass for surviving what she did to Derse. Normally I’d be a bit more quiet about that...but, whatevs. I can tell you’re not one of her men.”

She handed his crossbow back with a grin and a wink, her shirt slipping a bit where the hood and the bodice didn’t quite overlap. A sigil was tattooed into her shoulder, singing with power and familiar in a strange, offsetting way; it was overshadowed, however, by the powerful, warm aura of the charm she pulled out from under her shirt, offering it out for him to look at. He took it gently between his fingers, feeling the residual heat from her skin sink into his palm, and whistled, long and low, as he studied the miniature sun in it, carved into polished, purple-stained wood and set with some kind of citrine jewel. “This is probs how you ran into me, by the way, so don’t go complainin’ about me hexin’ you- it’s a good luck charm, made by my mom before...well. Before her luck ran out.” Roxy’s smile wavered, and she slung the crossbow back over his shoulder with careful hands before he could respond, still chattering eagerly away in his ear as she did so.

He hadn’t known someone could  _ talk  _ this much- usually, he was the one who talked the ear off of people with his esoteric enjoyments-  but he found himself relaxing quickly in her company, his ruffled social feathers soothed by the continuous stream of friendly talk. It was quite a contrast from the carapacian from earlier; she hadn’t even pulled a knife on him yet! So he just let out a low hum, happy to sit back and listen. “It’s sending out these little pings of really good vibes from you, beeping like a buzzerbird with a stick in his feathers, which is why I’m probably being obnoxious and slobbering all over you while you freak out. Now.” She pulled the charm back and tucked it into her shirt, looking a little sheepish. “What’s wrong with your sickass crossbow? I’ll shut up now, I promise.”

Jake couldn’t help himself- he laughed at that, relieved to find a friendly face, pressing a hand to her horse’s side for balance. “Oh, by golly, don’t apologize! You’ve got quite a pair of lips on you, my lady, but I assure you that I’ve no issue with it.” He rubbed a hand over the soft hair of the horse’s hide, patting it fondly, and crossed his arms, giving her the stellar grin that he just  _ knew _ was a heartbreaker, hoping to put her at ease. He’d been told in the past that it was quite effective at catching and holding attention, and he didn’t want Roxy to go about thinking that he wasn’t fond of her company- not when she was the first person in a long, long while to not act awkwardly around him, and  _ especially  _ not when she was going to be his guide. “I’m quite the chatterbox myself sometimes, though I haven’t proven myself worthy of that title quite yet. Beat me to the punch, you did.” He chuckled, and Roxy grinned back at him, her shoulders slumping with relief. “Lead me on, by all means, and I’ll tell you what got my bow all backed up on the way.”

“Aw, great. ‘Preciate it, Jake, you got no idea how much rambling my family could get up to. They’re a bad influence.” Roxy set her fingers to her mouth and let out a sharp wolf-whistle. Calliope and Caliborn came streaking back to her side, two near-identical blurs that made the horse stomp and blow out his breath uneasily until Jake could help pat him back into a state of peace. Roxy gave them each an affectionate scratch behind the ear, then mounted up, offering a hand to him after she got herself situated. Jake took it gladly, eager to relieve the pressure from his aching feet- even if it meant sitting flush behind Roxy, the latent magical heat of her sigil a constant, ebbing pulse in the back of his eyes. The outer curve of it looked achingly familiar- if he could get a closer look at it, he would be able to decipher its purpose, but that would require asking her permission to look, and Jake wasn’t  _ that  _ comfortable yet… “If you think I’m bad, just you fucking wait until you meet Dirk.’’ Roxy punctuated this statement with a snort, clicking her tongue as she lead her horse back out to the trail. “Once you get that guy on a tangent, he never fucking stops. Like,  _ ever.” _

That’s a name, and, judging by the fondness of Roxy’s voice, that’s the name of a person who meant a lot to her. “Who’s this Dirk fellow?” He kept his voice low and cheerful, hoping it wouldn’t give away the fact that he was currently holding the back of the saddle in a white-knuckled grip. The trees swallowed them, and as the forest closed around them, Roxy  _ did _ something with the shadows, a faint prickling sensation sweeping over his skin as she hummed a quiet incantation under her breath, the darkness closing in around them. Jake held no ability over magic, but he was raised by a powerful witch, and the pins-and-needles sensation of a spell being shaped was as familiar to him as breathing. “Is he a magician like you?”

“Hmm? Who, Dirk?” Roxy glanced back at him, her power-charged eyes near-luminous against the sudden nightfall around them. “Nah. He’s got some magic- it runs in the bloodline- but it’s latent, not overt. He’s got no real conscious control over it, much to his chagrin.” She rubbed a hand along her horse’s mane thoughtfully, then circled a finger in the space between the stallion’s ears, cutting a hole in the mask of darkness so the filtered sunlight of the forest could come streaming through. “He’s my cousin and my colleague, helps me out by crafting and smithing talismans and other shit for me to enchant and sell. If your crossbow is malfunctioning due to a warping in the metal or a technical issue, he’s the guy who’s gonna help you out. I can un-disappear missing parts, but I just shoot the bows and do the magic, I don’t fix them. Only problem is that he lives back up in the mountains you just crossed, out in one of the abandoned smithshops, so getting to him is a real pain in the ass.” Roxy made a big show of rolling her eyes- Jake had an inkling that this particular positioning was something that had been long fought over between the two of them. “I’m pretty much the only way that you’re gonna find him.”

“Oh, blast, I think that’s exactly the issue that I’ve got going on here. Took a tumble a few days in and knocked it up on a hardwood tree, then jammed it further when I tried to shoot a tiger with it.” Jake grimaced, not looking forward to another trek through the mountains. He had been excited to explore the ruins- still was, to some extent- but the prospect of meeting the dragon again had put a damper on his nerves. “It’s sure as hell banged halfway to betsy, I’m going to need a smith to reshape the parts that got all screwed to hell and back. Aw, nuts.”

“Banged halfway to betsy-” Roxy whispered, bemused. “What- no, nevermind, I can’t judge.” She shook her head, and Jake let out a breath that he didn’t realize he was holding. Trying to explain his vernacular never ended well; the past few times he tried to explain it to the employers of Crockercorp, they just blankly stared at him before starting the entire conversation over again. “Don’t worry about it too much, though- Dirk hasn’t had anyone to talk to but me for literal ages, it’s driving him stir crazy. A complex repair job is exactly what he needs to stop being a grumpy idiot- I won’t even charge you extra for needin’ to guide you.” She winked at him playfully, eyes twinkling in the slip of light. “And don’t you worry none about the dragon, either, you’re too sweet an eyecandy for me to let you go to waste in dragonfire.”

“Oh, gracious! You’re too kind, madam.” Jake flashed her a smile, and tried to keep the wobble of apprehension out of his voice. Her ability to sense his fears was uncanny, and as sweet as she was, all her concern was doing for him was making him  _ want _ to fight the dragon, if only to prove that he was more than capable of handling it- even if his mind was screaming at him that that was a very, very,  _ very _ bad idea. “But don’t you worry about me. I’ve an insatiable hungering for adventure- I was planning on exploring some of those old forges anyways. Might cut you the trouble of having to guide me, if I manage to stumble across his haunt.”

Roxy hummed quietly, and looked back to the trail. Her voice, when she spoke again, was soft, a quiet murmur nearly hidden by the sound of the dogs panting and the horse’s hooves breaking through the undergrowth. “Hmm...maybe.” She was quiet for a moment, and then, with an edge of disbelief, said: “Wait. You said you broke your crossbow in a rainforest. Are you tellin’ me you went  _ through _ the fuckin hellforest?”

Jake ducked under a branch and stared at the back of her cloak, bemused. “Er...yes? Was...there any other way to get through to the inhabited parts of the isles?”

Roxy buried her face in her horse’s mane and let out a long, low groan, and then proceeded to spend the next fifteen minutes or so of their ride explaining exactly  _ why  _ one did not just trek through the rainforest, and just exactly  _ how  _ badly he could have been mauled, trapped, eaten alive, roasted, poisoned, and various other iterations of horrible, painful deaths. By the time that they finally crossed the gates of the village and dissipated the screening spell, Jake was feeling a bit green, and Roxy had somehow managed to convince herself that he was either an explorer of a caliber that the world had never seen before, or he had some kind of powerful luck enchantment on him, to the point where she was desperate to do a screening spell on him, in hopes that she could ‘collab with him to get some sweet deets, yo’.

“I swear, Jakey boy, you’re fuckin magic and you don’t even know it.” Roxy was still babbling on about it when she dismounted, pulling him along with little heed for the startled squeak he made when he slid off her horse. “Even the dragon tribes fear the jungles. There’s something sacred in there that you just don’t fuckin touch. We stick to the trails, and find our way through to the sea, but we don’t cross through the rainforest. It’s forbidden.” She glanced around, frowning then pressed her hand into the small of his back, insistent and almost-possessive; Jake opened his mouth to protest, but snapped it right shut again when he saw the way that the villagers were looking at him. Most were clearly refugees, the children of pirates and slaves who had come to the isles to flee the laws of their kingdoms; some were lowblooded trolls, watching him with a rainbow of weary eyes, limbs crooked and scar-mangled from the work they had done under the Condense. Others were clearly displaced noblefolk of the old city of Derse, standing tall and proud among the rabble, their accusatory glares and refined dignity a sharp contrast against the shabbiness of their clothes. Jake looked at them, looked at the way they were looking at him, and shivered, letting Roxy sweep him by their judgemental glares as she pulled him into the inn.

The receptionist, another black-shelled carapacian, merely gave them a cursory glance before nodding and flicking Roxy a key. She gave them a winning smile, chirped out a cheerful thank-you, and then shoved Jake up the stairs, hard, her smile falling as soon as they got out of the view of the public.

“Sorry,” she whispered, pulling her hand back like she’d just touched a hot iron. “‘S rude of me, I know, but the people here aren’t very trusting of outsiders. Hard to blame them, after what the fish bitch did to us, but my people are natural warriors, and they don’t trust easily. I had to let them know that I was friendly with you.” She rubbed her arms, a rueful look on her face, then gestured for him to follow her, ascending into the second floor of the inn. “Everyone here knows me, though, so as long as they realize that I’m doing business with you, they wouldn’t dare hurt you.” She paused by a doorway, the dark brown wood rubbed smooth by the pressure of countless hands, and threw him a critical look, looking over his travel gear with a tight expression. “Got any official-looking gear on you? Jewelry? Something to prove that you’re trekking around the woods on official, non-troll queen business?”

“Oh, sure. I’ve got an unsullied cloak on me still, and my cartographer’s kit is easy enough to sling over my shoulders once I unpack it all. And I’ve got a Crockercorp badge or two, if that company hasn’t gotten into any trouble here.” Jake paused, and threw Roxy a worried glance. But she was busy dumping her gear out on one of the beds, and sifting through them, so he forged on, hoping he didn’t sound too uncertain when he asked “... _ is _ there an issue with Crockercorp on this island?”

“This particular one? No, don’t think so. That’s the company that tries to sell lotsa easy-made potions, yeah?” When Jake voiced an affirmative, Roxy shook her head, humming in satisfaction as she snatched up a charm and turned it over, fingertips skimming over the small cat carved on its surface. “Thought so. No, we’re in the clear for you proclaiming your loyalty to them. I’ve heard rumours that the Condense is trying to buy them out, but the sheer fact that she hasn’t managed to do that yet is enough to win regard in the eyes of the populace, I think. Wear your cloak tomorrow, and put on the circlet. Without an enchantment, if you can manage it.” She set the charm aside, then shook out a length of night-blue silk, cursing quietly as the knots in it pulled tighter. Her shirt slipped sideways, exposing her shoulder, and-

And.

Jake recognized the tattoo.

It wasn’t the same. Not quite. For one, his was permanent, and done in his grandmother’s handwriting. But the runes of power intertwined and interwoven, singing songs of change and reversal- those were glaringly familiar. Familiar because he had the same runes, the same glyph, the same spell burned into his skin. Familiar because he  _ knew _ what it did, what it had given him, and what it meant to have one.

Hers was incomplete, a section of the symbol missing. Jake hadn’t noticed any...deficit in the spell- Roxy’s voice was deep, yes, but the difference was unnoticeable when compared to the normal pitch of a woman’s voice from his homeland, and she had the normal curves and...er...padding...that any born lady would have. She had gotten that part of the enchantment down, and it sure as hell wasn’t his business to ask what she still had to add onto it. It would be polite to just look away, to pretend he had never seen the slip up. Polite, and easy- but Jake thought about how nice she had been to him, and thought of how  _ right _ it had felt when his own sigil had worked its magic, and found that for once, he could not stay silent.

“Roxy.” His voice came out hushed, tremulous, and he flushed hard as she gave him a curious glance, clearing his throat as he tried again. “Your sigil is showing.”

She stared at him for one second, uncomprehending- and then her face flushed to match his, cursing as she yanked her hood back, bunching the fabric to cover it. “Fuckin’ piece of shit, shoulda known to not wear this loose a shirt- wait.” She stopped her harrying, giving him a wide-eyed, almost frightened look as realization dawned on her. “You  _ recognize _ it?”

Jake nodded, and shuffled his feet, deliberating for a second before finally giving in and untucking his shirt. “I sure do. I’d have to, since the friggin’ thing’s literally carved directly onto my belly.” He raised his shirt for a second, letting her look at his sigil; her breath hitched in her chest, eyes darting over his abdomen, and a little bit of the tension eased out of him when he realized that she was reading the glyphs on his skin, not just staring at his abs. Not that he didn’t appreciate a little bit of attention! It just. Wasn’t really the time for that, was all. “My grandma gave it to me when I was young, as soon as I realized who I wanted to be. She was a real accomplished witch, had a knack for any spell that involved nature and life and the cosmos. Spent a few months figuring out the transformation charm, spent a few weeks figuring out how to get the spell to work with me, and then slapped it on me and, well...here I am.” He dropped his shirt, and shuffled his feet a little, giving her a nervous smile. “I’m not sure if I can be of much help, since I’ve no experience with editing or casting all that malarkey, but I was thinking...maybe I could help you fill in the gaps on yours? If it pleased you?”

“If it-” Roxy took a sharp breath in, sitting abruptly down on the bed, and then broke into a weak laugh, shaking her head ruefully. “Jake. I don’t think you realize what you’re offering here. I just made mine, I didn’t...this shit is heavy magic.” She pushed a hand through her hair, her charms lying alone and forgotten on the bed. When she looked at him again, her face was grave, her eyes searching his face as if she would find some kind of answer there. “The magic of Derse is- was- honed primarily for weaponry and warfare, when it wasn’t allowed to roam wild. I know that you know we were known for dark magic; that’s because it was easy to draw enough casting power from the battlefield, when the wars happened, and even easier to pull energy from the volcanoes, if we skewed it right. Our magic was primarily negative-built and offensive. We didn’t learn shit like...this.” She stared at Jake’s abdomen, as if she could see his tattoo from under his shirt if she just stared hard enough. For all he knew, she could. But there was no prickle of magic coming off of her, no influx of cold to indicate her drawing in the energy for a spell. She just sat there, and pinned him in a gaze that was quite reminiscent of the look his tutors would get when they thought that the reason why he kept running away from their lessons was because he didn’t understand, not because he was too bored to continue listening. “You understand just how much trust you’re putting into me by allowing a former sorceress of Derse learn a bonafide transformation spell, right? Even if it’s just something to help me be, well...me, it’s still very powerful.” 

Oh dear. She was quite right. Jake had considered it, of course, but he hadn’t given it much more than a fleeting thought, having thought that Derse was long, long beyond its warmongering days by now. It had already been nearly two decades, after all- but Roxy still referred to herself as a citizen of the kingdom, despite its fallen nature, and he had seen the defiance in the gazes of the civilians when they had seen a stranger in their midst. If any of the dashing adventure stories he liked to read were right, then there was probably a rebellion on the rise, destined to take back what was once theirs.

But it would be cruel to deny her now, and Jake was pretty sure that Roxy wouldn’t take his gift lightly, if she took his offer so seriously. So he shook his head, and gave her a smile he knew would set her at ease, gingerly leaning up against the bed frame. “I do, Roxy. I’m not going to let some friggin’ thing like a little bit of history muck up a gesture of friendship. Besides! You were kind enough to lead me through the woods and let me ride your horse! It would be a blasted shame if I didn’t repay you for that kindness in some sort of way, friendliness of our respective nations be damned.”

Roxy gave him a disbelieving look, then dropped her head to her chest. When she finally managed to take in a steady breath, she made sure to let it out in a big, over dramatic sigh, as if her concern for Jake’s professionalism somehow overrode the excitement that was quivering through her. “I can’t deal with this on an empty stomach. I’m getting us dinner.” She stood back up, absently tugging her shirt straight, and fixed Jake in a stern glare. “I’m paying, don’t you fuckin’ dare argue,” she started, and gave him a gentle push towards a chair when he opened his mouth to protest. “No, don’t. What you’re giving me is worth much more than a simple tour to the mountains and some lodging, and I ain’t the kinda girl to take advantage of someone.” She patted him on the shoulder, opening the door to the room in a shaky daze, then paused and looked back at him, looking at him like he had just given her her first draught of water after a long time struggling through a desert. “You’re a fuckin’ god, you realize that, right?”

It was the first time in a while that someone had looked at him as if really seeing him for his talents, rather than just admiring his looks, and the realization made something ache fiercely in Jake’s chest. He licked his lips, gathered his thoughts, and hoped his voice didn’t sound too shaky when he quietly joked, “A god for such a small kindness? I think you’re going to have to reconsider your religion. The gods you pray to sound quite unkind.”  

Roxy giggled in response, the hysterical, disbelieving edge in her eyes finally bleeding through into her voice. “Fuckin’ hell, he’s funny on top of it all. That’s it. Jake, you’re my new best friend. Friendship ended with Dirk; now you’re my buddy. It’s you.”

_ Fuck  _ yes. He had a friend in this strange land- a friend with very magical, very powerful, very knowledgeable benefits. Jake beamed happily at her, and let the warmth in his chest flood his voice when he replied. “I’m honoured. I truly am.”

Roxy beamed back, and finally left, shutting the door behind her with a faint  _ click.  _ Jake leaned back on the bed, minding the various knick knacks and enchanted things, and pulled his little journal out of his satchel, composing a letter for the first time in nearly two months.

_ Dear Janey, _

_ You’ll never guess the amount of hogswollash I’ve had to handle today! I swear, this island is conspiring to confound me, but it’s not all bad news and dreary days, I promise. I’ve managed to make a companion out of one of the locals, a lovely young Rogue sorceress going by the name of Roxy... _

* * *

 

 

It took Roxy a little longer than anticipated to get their dinners, delayed, as she said, ‘by the bullshit suspicions of a beetlebug that didn’t know how to keep their sneaky claws outta other people’s businesses’. Even so, Jake couldn’t rightly find it in himself to complain; it gave him enough time to finish up his letter to Jane, clean up a bit, and to sort out his gear on the other bed for his sojourn in the morning, separating his broken equipment from the rest to bundle up and hand off to this Dirk fellow when he found him. By the time Roxy elbowed the door open and brought in two steaming bowls of spicy beef stew, he was in a much better mood than he had anticipated he’d be after a long trek, and the usual meaningless dinnertime chit-chat came to him easily, his exclamations of delight over the food met with the customary cultural boasting from Roxy. She truly was delightful company; quick-witted and brimming with stories, flirty in a familiar, friendly way that didn’t make him feel like he had to reciprocate. She reminded him of the parrots that used to fly up to his bedroom window when he was a little boy, lively and fiery and full of chatter, and the softer memory of his boyhood only warmed him to her more. 

After the obligatory post-dinner teatime had finished, though, the plates taken away by a housekeeper, it was time to discuss magic, and that playful, bubbly edge was gone, replaced by something much more intense. Roxy ordered Jake to lie back in her bed and to show his sigil, setting the room’s candles alight with a silent flick of her wrist, and Jake obliged, watching her nervously as she procured a journal and a charcoal pen from somewhere within the depths of her bag to take notes. It was a little intense, to be honest; lying as still as possible in a stranger’s bed, watching a gorgeous woman he had only just met stare him down, but the keen edge to Roxy’s gaze was of a purely academic fashion, and he soon grew bored with tensing up everytime she poked him around or leaned in to give the swirling glyphs a closer look. The candles that she had set up around them lended themselves quite nicely to reading, anyways, and he found the entire endeavor much more enjoyable once Roxy passed over his little book of legends that he’d tucked away in his bag for when sleep didn’t come easily to him on the road.

“What’s this one for, Jake?” Roxy tapped gently at his abdomen with her pencil, squinting at a looping symbol curling up along his ribs. There was charcoal dust smudged on her knuckles, staining her fingertips black, and she left a streak of it on her cheek when she idly reached up to scratch at a spot where her hair was tickling her. “Shit’s all looped in of itself, I can’t figure out what it’s trying to do. Is this symbol derivative of ‘sun’ in the bigass-ball-of-fire-in-the-sky sense, or does it mean it in the ‘kid-I-shit-out-that-may-or-may-not-have-a-penis sense’?”

Jake dropped the book onto his face and snorted, trying his best not to laugh. Judging by the fake-indignant look on Roxy’s face, he didn’t quite manage it. “Heavens, Roxy, you really need to warn a gent before you go about describing shit like that, you’ll make me choke on my own breath at this rate,” he chuckled, thumbing the book closed so he could see what she was looking at. He’d already read it enough times to have every ballad and sonnet written out on his heart, anyways, so he was grateful for the pause- the particular legend he had been reading was just about to get into the harrowing part where the prince and his companion were about to starve to death, and even though he already knew that it was going to turn out alright, it didn’t mean that it didn’t still set his teeth on edge. Focusing on the whorls of black-and-white ink on his skin was much better, and he craned his neck as best as he could without moving his stomach, trying to look at the rune in its entirety. “Oh, that one- a little bit of both, I think. My grandma was a big fan of drawing her energy from the sun, so she made sure to base this enchantment on sunlight so that it would continue to hold power even after she was gone. The second meaning is a reference to a nickname she had for me- she always was a fan of calling me her little sun.” Jake touched the lower swirl of the sigil, felt his heart ache at the familiar, not-quite-blood heat of it. “I suspect she wove that into her glyph, too. Family magic is a powerful thing. Enchantments based off of it rarely fade.”

“They sure fuckin’ don’t.” Roxy’s voice was soft, her eyes misty with the remnants of an old sadness. She touched the good-luck charm on her chest lightly, as if wanting to assure herself that it was still there; not for the first time, Jake wondered who her mother had been, to afford such expensive materials, to be able to create such a powerful talisman. And, not for the first time, he decided against asking, and tucked that thought away for later. She did not offer him a family name, and he did not wish to inflict any insult. There was a time and a place for personal questions about long-lost family members, and now was not it. “Sometimes I wonder...No. It doesn’t matter.” She turned back to her notebook, and jabbed her pencil into the paper, a little harder than she needed. “Explain that thing with your grandma drawing the power from the sun, again? I’ve had my gyphs try to draw their oomph outta the natural environment, but my magic is based off of stealing from non existence, so it just ended up draining me. Gotta work in some sustainable power sourcing, yo.” She clicked her tongue, tapping the edge of her pencil against it, then scribbled down the runes onto the page. “If I can figure out how to do it, I can reverse-engineer it for my own special brand of bullshit. I’ve already got the part where she adjusted it to match your magic down, but I’m not sure where to source that power.”

“What magic? I’ve got none.” Jake squirmed a little, trying to peer where she pointed; all he managed to do was flex his abs, warping the runes and earning him a dissatisfied glare from Roxy. “I mean, well, in the soul and energy source sense I have some, I suppose, but I’ve never been able to cast any spells. Flunked solidly out of that malarkey, I’m afraid to admit.”

Roxy sighed, and set aside her book, her teaching face coming back. Jake was starting to see it more and more whenever he acted up, and was starting to privately worry that he did something to make her think he was stupid. Well...he knew that people thought he was stupid. But he had to admit, it was a little disheartening to think that everyone started to see him as such after only a few hours of meeting him. Even Jane seemed to think he was shallower than a butterfly’s thinkpan, and he had known her for  _ years.  _ “Jake. I have no fucking idea how you haven’t realized this by now. You’re like, what….twenty-five?” At Jake’s tentative nod, she sighed, and tapped him lightly in the center of his chest, leaving a smear of charcoal against his dark skin. “Dude, I’m not a soul diviner or energy reader or anything, and even I can tell that you’re fucking  _ dripping _ with power. It’s like looking into the fucking sun; it’s all condensed into one little ball of ‘yo holy shit magic honey juice vapor shit’. I feel like I have to get some sunglasses for my fuckin’ aura everytime I go to cast something in your vicinity.” Her stern look turned contemplative, focus breaking and falling away; she spent a good half-second staring at the sun symbol on his chest before turning back to her book, scribbling furiously away in a sloppy hand as a realization hit her. “Oh my fuckin god.  _ Son.  _ She incorporated your nickname, your grandson-y status and the main source of the enchantment power to match your aura- all in one go. That slippery clever genius  _ bitch.”  _

Jake watched her scribble down her notes, letting her get her thoughts sorted, and then cleared his throat and picked his book back up, flipping to a random page on a whim. The words swam on the page, familiar lines of text fuzzing together as he tried to read again.

_ ‘ _ **_He was the dark one, the dread warrior, the drake whose fire burned hotter than the ones around him. His breath was the flame that dripped from the blood of the Earth, and his fury in war matched no other...but the white dragon was his bane, and afore long his fire had been tempered, tamed by the patience that the Wayfarer showed as he searched for the lands that they would one day call their roost. And afore long, they had grown inseparable, fire tempered by a tempest, so that they were seen not as two lone rogues, but as a single soul, and the blood that the Warrior drew dripped from the jaws of the Cripple and the Wayfinder as if they were truly one in body, and not just in spirit…’_ **

Fuck it. He couldn’t focus. Jake closed the book again, and stared up at the smoke-stained ceiling, picking his words carefully. “You know, the people at Crockercorp said that too. Said that I’d be useful if I only just found out a way to learn my magic. As if I was some friggin’ machine to turn on, some kind of animal that would bow to their yoke and give myself to them everytime they asked me to. It constricted a fellow, if you know what I mean. I’m...not sure if that helps anything, since this question is kind of personal, but. Is that why you took up Rogue work?”

Roxy’s fervent scratching stilled. When Jake braved a glance at her, he found her staring unseeingly at the runes she’d copied onto the page, a faint frown creasing her brow.

“Well…” she said, slowly and carefully. “M’ not entirely sure what you mean about that. I’m a Rogue because pretty much my entire family is dead, except Dirk.” Jake winced, an apology sitting right on the tip of his tongue, but Roxy shot him a stern glance before he could voice it. “Don’t give me none of that crap, Jake, there was nothing you could have done about it. I was only eight when it happened, anyways, so I can’t remember enough of it to really hurt anymore.”

That was a halfhearted, blatant lie. Jake could see it writ in the slump of her shoulders, the pain knitting her brow. She hurt- and she hurt a lot, some small edge of shrapnel still buried in the wound. Jake could relate; after all, the only blood family that he had ever truly known had died by the very same hand that killed her family, had destroyed her home.

“Dirk was hurt more than I was, I think. Him ‘n his brother. They were...well, it doesn’t matter now. Derse was important to them, is what I’m saying.” Her hand stilled on the page, frown deepening. “Neither of us wanted this. Not really. But it was the only thing we could have done.” She laughed at that, sharp and bitter. “I mean, I guess I like it well enough. My magic’s all about stealing from non existence; I’m good at figuring out how to pull through when shit gets rough. But I think I’m the only one out of all of us who really survived the fall.” Abruptly, she pulled away, pinching out the light of the candles nearby. Jake blinked against the encroaching darkness, but Roxy seemed to take strength in it, a deep breath filling her lungs as the smell of smoke filled the room. “Yeah, sorry Jake, but my attention is totally shot. I’ll have to continue staring at your delicious abs sometime else. It’s time for this sentimental bitch to go to bed.”

“Well, don’t let me be the conceited young gentleman who demands to keep a lady up to stare at his belly,” Jake muttered, without heat. Roxy looked haggard, in the way that only came about when poking at old wounds- and, truth be told, he was feeling quite sleepy, anyways. He planned to set out to find this Dirk fellow in the early morning, as soon as he woke up; it would be best for him to rest up. And then, because the mood of the room was starting to grate on him, he asked, “Oh, and do you have any intercontinental mail carriers, by any chance? I have a letter to my boss to send, and I’d rather it not have to hop from place to place like a rabbit that took one too many bites from the sugar patch.”

Roxy stopped packing up her various charms and talismans to make a face. Jake’s heart dropped in his chest, afraid he had somehow insulted her. “Erm, you don’t have to, it’s no big deal-”

“No, no, it’s fine. Just hate the mail carrier.” Roxy waved a hand dismissively, shoveling a handful of gorgeously-carved wooden trinkets into a bag with little heed of their destination. “He’s a rider of the Queynï. Been insufferable ever since his dragon chose him, even though he was literally only shipped off to Wind territory because the asshole is a fuckin’ seadweller who’s afraid of deep water. He should be in town around now, I think this is the week that he flies back here.” She idly hooked a finger through a couple of charms and chucked them at Jake, snickering a little when he cursed and fumbled to catch them. “Here. Somethin’ tells me that you’re a morning person, and somethin’ else tells me that you hate sticking around towns for too long. These should help you when you’re wanderin’ about tomorrow, and they’ll help me meet up with you later.”

“Oh! By golly, thank you!” Jake pocketed one, then held the other up, squinting at it to see if he could decipher its purpose. As far as he could tell, it was supposed to draw attention to him- or, no, wait, it was supposed to draw attention  _ away _ from him- specifically from dangerous natural predators. An ornately-carved lion danced on its surface, angular and sharp, with a big, yawning mouth that looked like it was set to swallow the enchantment whole. It was gorgeous work, if not a little morbid. “Is this Dirk’s work, by any chance? He makes your charms, right?”

“Yeep.” Roxy popped the ‘p’, and extinguished the rest of the candles in the same go, plunging the room into moonlight. The silvery glow of it turned the lion’s eyes into dark shadows, and Jake shivered and tucked it away before he let himself become too spooked by it. “If you’re lucky enough to somehow find him, show it to him and say that I sent you. He’ll probably think you bought it, but eh, whatever. It’s a temporary enchantment, and I’ll probably be there to help mediate his suspicious ass, so it’s not like it matters much anyways.” Her cleanup finished, Roxy tucked her bag into the gap between her bed and the nightstand, and then flopped down on the bed, yawning. “Sleep safely, Jake.”

A quick pop of magic, and she was out like a light not a minute later, soft snores echoing off of the wooden walls as she slumbered, spread-eagled and messy on the bed. He watched her for a few seconds, wide-eyed, and then quietly began to change into his nightclothes, relaxing in increments as Roxy continued to sleep, uninterrupted by the sound of him rustling and shuffling about.

....Jake hadn’t actually expected her to share a room with him. But supposed he couldn’t complain much; he’d offered to pay for her services by showing her how to use his magic, so he guessed it would make sense for her to want to keep a close eye on him. He would probably do much of the same, were he in her position. If his grandmother’s magic was really as valuable as she said it was, then it would do little good to let him out of easy reaching range, just in case someone  _ else  _ came along to shank him in the arm, or other, squishier places.  

Still, it warmed his heart to have someone friendly by him, in this unfriendly place so far from home. He had spent many a night on an expedition alone, sleeping in places and by people that passed by him by like a stone in a river. It was nice to find someone who was willing to stick by him for once, someone who was somewhat of a kindred spirit. Jake could only hope that Roxy felt the same about him.

It was even nicer to be able to read by the moonlight without living in fear of being eaten. Jake cracked his book of legends open again, and sank down into his bed with a happy little sigh, paying little mind to the hum of the forest as he settled down to sleep.    

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quick note: 'Rogue' just means a traveling service person who isn't constrained to a master, but still operates within legal constrictions and are thus no technical threat to the government
> 
> -Everyone technically has magic, since magic is energy and is directly tied to your own energy field/soul. Everyone has magic that expresses itself and is channeled differently- a sort of ‘brand’, if you will- and people can generally be split up into groups with ‘overt’ magic (magic that is readily accessible, reacts to thoughts, and is shaped and directed via spells, sigils, etc), or ‘latent’ magic (magic that is difficult to control and usually reacts to the person’s emotional state, and is controlled entirely by whims and desires). Whether or not someone is considered magical, however, depends entirely on how much control, ability, or raw energy that they have. Some people’s magic takes too much energy out of them, and has the potential to kill them after one cast; some people’s magic is deeply intertwined with their ‘true self’, which makes it difficult to access; some people have little to no control over their magic, and breaking down that dam can result in them going completely batshit out the belfry. Or, on the flip side, some people are just so fucking full of magic that they need to constantly cast things to drain it out and stay sane. It’s all very situational. Generally though, someone who is considered magical is someone who can cast spells without killing themselves or everyone around them, are able to set up spells that safely rely on multiple sources of energy to keep them going, and can control it enough to get a desired effect with little issue
> 
> -Sigils are the most popular method of casting lasting spells, since they’re pretty much a recipe for how the energy of the spell needs to be directed. They don’t need to be written in a specific language, or even in a language at all- all that matters is that the caster charges it with enough intent and backup sources to keep it juiced. Oftentimes, people do things like Grandma Jade does, where they lump in multiple facets of what they’re trying to capture into runic glyphs to achieve the desired effect without having to write everything
> 
> -Casting spells on other people is difficult, however, because you need to adjust your own magic to match that of the person you’re laying it on. If this is not done correctly, the spell can fail, or cause an intense side effect in the recipient. Jade’s magic was based off of an understanding of nature, and how to bend it to get her desired effect; Jake’s magic is much different, and while his sigil technically operates on Jade’s rules, it’s all him powering it. It’s why Roxy had to study how Jake’s sigil worked, rather than just copying it- she has to warp it and match it to how her style of magic works to get the desired effect.
> 
> Also, this was totally Roxy's horse:   
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tczhzn-mIh8&t=7s


End file.
